Letter to Christophilus: On the Subject of Reason and Faith

Dear Christophilus, 

Thanks for letting me read your chapter on Henry Dodwell.*  Boy, I was right to think that he would be my kind of guy!  It’s a token of the shallowness of that rationalistic age, and the Biblical ignorance of his critics, that they thought Dodwell’s book was a parody, and not a serious work. They couldn’t imagine that anyone could seriously challenge the “rational faith” so dear to the Deists and rationalists of his day.  

Dodwell is justifiably disgusted by Descartes’ pretense of neutrality in matters of truth. Descartes never really doubted. The person who really doubts everything is the catatonic schizophrenic, whose doubt renders him immobile. And no one is really neutral either—“the heart is deceitful above all things...”  

I don’t think anything is gained by labeling Dodwell (or me) a “fideist”and a “mystic” If your summary of his book is accurate (and I’m sure it is; you have a real talent for such things), then he seems to be saying the same thing Pascal was saying: the heart has reasons that the reason can’t comprehend. Dodwell may have prejudiced his readers by calling rational faith an “oxymoron”; but it’s quite clear that he was not advocating “irrational faith.” Fideism opposes reason in matters of faith; true faith begins with the evidences of reason and transcends them.

Years ago I told you that, to my mind, apologetics best served to confirm believers, and not to convert unbelievers. Reason is good and reasons are helpful in answering the objections of honest seekers, and reassuring faltering believers. But the unbeliever has a stake in not believing. In his deepest heart every man knows that there’s a God and that everyone is accountable to Him; but Satan has blinded his eyes, and only if the Holy Spirit opens them will he be persuaded.  

The proof-texts for this ‘doctrine’ are too numerous and clear to need repeating. Jesus said, ‘No one can come to me unless the Father draws him.’ The God of this age has blinded us until the Lord (Holy Spirit) opens our hearts (Acts 16:14; 2Cor. 4:4).  It's we who must repent (Acts 2:38) and yet it is God who grants repentance (Acts 5:31; 11:18; 2Tim. 2:24, 25). We cannot without Him; He will not without us. Whosoever will may come, yet only those who are “ordained to eternal life” actually come (Acts 13:48). So you see mere rational religion is useless against those who “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18). 

The Holy Spirit, I’m sure, works through arguments and evidence; but He is most active when the direct claims of God are being pressed home. So the time must come, preferably early on, before too much time is wasted, when one leaves off debate and starts preaching.  

Once a fellow student challenged me with Jonah and the great fish. I refused to take the bait (pardon the pun).  I said, “I can see that you are interested in the Bible. Why don’t you find a modern language New Testament, read it and get to know Jesus, and He will satisfy you about Jonah.” He said, “I don’t want to read the New Testament; I want you to tell me now whether Jonah was swallowed by a whale.” I repeated my first advice twice more, and he gave up. Whether he took my challenge or not, I never found out; but I would not take his. Is that fideism? I don’t know. But I knew that I couldn’t satisfy him in his present mood, no matter how logical I might be. So I challenged him with Christ.  

I don’t think of myself as either a fideist or a mystic, yet I find Dodwell’s arguments quite pleasing and (more important) scriptural. It takes a supreme effort of will to shake off the convenient categories of ideological (and one might say theological) thinking. And one like yourself, who has employed a well-spent lifetime doing critical analysis, just may have developed some bad habits. I used to love to study the history of ideas. It was so much fun being able to classify everyone; it gave one a sense of power and arcane knowing, I suppose. I now imagine my mission in life to be to re-complexify such simplistic thinking. I’m not saying that it was not broadly helpful to have handy categories, but when it comes to life itself, labels usually distort the truth. 

Chesterton once said something like this: “An open mind, like an open mouth, is open so it can close on something solid.” Once one commits to faith, it’s like coming home, and no one is neutral about home. No sane person, least of all Dodwell, would advocate irrational faith. I think your inability to appreciate Dodwell (and me), and to trust us, is that you think because we reject ‘rational faith’ as an oxymoron we are advocating ‘irrational faith.’  It’s an understandable error. Dodwell’s explanation of the prayer, “Increase our faith,” however, shows that he was not a mystic.  He acknowledged that his faith was “attained in part from natural and ordinary means of conviction, and the consideration of the evidence.” His apprehension of faith was not a blind leap, but a reasonable step that took him beyond mere reason. For the rationalist seeing is believing. For Dodwell (and for me) believing becomes a kind of seeing. It isn’t irrational faith; it is a faith that transcends mere reason by virtue of the reasons of a heart opened and illumined by the Holy Spirit.  

What reason gives reason can take away. The faith of Jesus Christ will not stand up to critical analysis of a certain kind. Proud reason can  always find reasons for unbelief. The history of Bible criticism over the past 200 years proves that. The revelation of Jesus Christ was made to be a Way of Living, not just another idea to be subjected to critical scrutiny. It is the humble lover, not the proud critic, who has been called and chosen—“Except you become as little children...” Am I saying that my faith is not respectably reasonable?  By no means! I’m sure it is reasonable. To that higher ‘reason,’ which involves the heart, it is eminently reasonable, as nothing else is.

Dodwell’s point about the instruction of children in the faith is to me unanswerable. 

Prov. 2:1-5: “My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.” 

There it is, all in one Scripture: If you will accept and believe and obey on your parents’ word, that word, if it is true, will validate itself in your life. At length what was at first the faith of your fathers will become your own faith. It’s true that Moslems, atheists and Deists instruct their children as well. But that’s all the more reason to instruct children in truth. Many Christians can’t give rational reasons for believing the Bible is God’s Word. But when they practice their faith, they find that the Bible validates itself to them. We ‘fideists’ don’t see any alternative.  2Ti. 3:14-15: “But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”  

I thought for a moment there that you were indeed carried away, convinced by Dodwell’s logic. Then the bits about his going “over the edge,” “his rhetoric.” Why do you consider this very Biblical position, forcibly argued, to be ‘rhetoric’?  I think you should trust your heart on this one. I’m sorry Dodwell only ‘almost persuaded’ you. Would that you and everyone else were even as Dodwell and I are, except for our palpable inadequacies.   

Anyway, good job in summarizing Dodwell’s book.*

 Blessings,

*Christianity not Founded on Argument: and the True Principle of Gospel-Evidence (1741), by Henry Dodwell